ESG Defenders Pose as ‘Free Market’ Disciples

Activists and bureaucrats seek to deny capital to companies and whole industries via blacklists 

By Steve Marshall. He is attorney general of Alabama. Excerpts:

"America’s self-proclaimed “socially responsible” financial institutions, which should be competing in the free market, are instead joining forces with one another and their global counterparts to decide which companies—and, in some cases, which industries—should be permitted to continue their market participation unimpeded.

Since 2017, a growing number of these financial alliances, including Climate Action 100+, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance and the Venture Climate Alliance, have plotted to pressure blacklisted companies into making a priority of decarbonization and other social goals at the behest of the United Nations, not American consumers. In other words, by controlling trillions of dollars in assets, these groups intend to corner the market through potentially illegal horizontal agreements and force preferred social and political objectives on American companies and consumers.

The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative boasts 301 signatories and $59 trillion in assets under management. On its website, the group writes: “Our industry’s ability to drive the transition to net zero is extremely powerful. Without our industry on board, the goals set out in the Paris Agreement will be difficult to meet.”

This statement doesn’t refer to a company making a business choice because of consumer demand or shareholder interest. Rather, it reveals a coalition of major financial-industry players that have come together to choke out certain disfavored companies and industries by limiting their access to capital and then pointing to this manufactured obstruction as evidence that these firms are a bad investment. The resulting harm to the working public—of little interest to global elites—is higher energy costs and fewer options across a variety of markets, including automobiles, appliances and food production."

"Opposite us in these efforts is Joe Biden, whose presidency has been an ESG crusade in the crudest form. Mr. Biden is attempting to create the federal government’s own version of Climate Action 100+ by imposing emissions disclosures and other ESG litmus tests on federal contractors without the approval of Congress. The president would then have his own blacklist, useful for strong-arming companies to go woke in defiance of market forces and the legislative branch."